


Turpentine Kisses and Mistaken Blows

by mirrorballsymphony



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Book: Monstrous Regiment, F/F, Gen, Pyromania
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 15:50:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirrorballsymphony/pseuds/mirrorballsymphony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life was tough in the Grey House, drove you crazy. It drove Tilda to fire and to an open window.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turpentine Kisses and Mistaken Blows

Not much existed in Tilda’s head at the moment apart from her piecing together the useful explosive powder of flour and the wooden building that she had been locked in for only a couple of days, but already knew that others had been locked in before her. The sporadic bloodstains gave her some indication of that.

 

She had made sure not to think about it. Thinking would mean that she would have to remember, remember how he held her down and blacked her eye and ripped her top off and…

 

So she didn’t think.

 

Instead, she thought about flames. Flames were the one thing that was beautiful in her life, the one thing which she had complete power over. Sometimes one of the Sisters would be forgetful and leave a packet of matches on the side, and she would take them just so she could watch the petals of fire leap up from the match head with a freedom she would never have. Sometimes Magda would be able to find a scrap of paper for her and she would gently caress the edge of it with the flame until it blackened and crumbled, destroyed by the glow. She would grind the black powder under her foot until no one would ever know that she had found the matches and that _she had the power_.

 

For now, at least.

 

Magda would always try to find something for her to light when things got bad, when the Sisters had been more than generous with the whip and the punches and the prayers for their immortal souls, which seemed to go hand in hand. She would tear out the middle of her prayer book where no one ever looked so that Tilda was burning the very thing which kept her trapped, and then she would help her get rid of the mess, not caring that it blackened her fingers and inflamed the raw skin which covered them, red and swollen from sweeping and washing and grazing on the floor as someone tried to beat the living daylights out of her.

 

The door opened and Tilda snapped out of her reverie to look up in fear at the miller.

 

He grinned and moved towards her, locking the door behind him with practiced ease. He pulled off his shirt and Tilda was revolted at the pale, flabby skin and the sparse hair which covered his chest which had touched hers…

 

He grabbed her wrist as she tried to move away and pulled her closer, pushing her back onto the floor.

 

She closed her eyes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was eight or nine months later, Tilda was never quite sure when she had first been taken to the mill. She felt cold hands passing underneath her and lifting her up onto some sort of bed without sheets, virtually just a mattress on the floor.

 

It hurt. Everywhere hurt, but it seemed to culminate in her stomach where someone, she could have sworn, was jabbing her with a knife or a scalpel. There was no metallic sheen or precision to this, it was rough and brutal as if they were trying to get something out of her. But then the pain extended; her throat hurt from screaming and her head hurt from trying to keep it up as she was manhandled off so that she had some indication of whereabouts she was. She was back in the Grey House, she had smelled the odour of cabbage and blood as soon as she entered the room, and guessed this was where the girls who had been Sent Out returned to.

 

To forget about the pain and the voices around her, muffled murmurs which morphed into one drone of hatred and anger and disgust after a while, she thought of Magda. She must be here somewhere, not knowing where she was, maybe being beaten again like all the times before that she had spoken out against what someone had done. In her head, Tilda smiled at the thought of what Magda would do to the miller.

 

But it was too late for the miller now, wasn’t it? Too late for all those girls who he had abused, certainly, too late for whoever the bloodstains had come from, but now it was too late for the miller himself, who was exploded in a flurry of fire and flour. Let the dead bury the dead.

 

Tilda was dead somewhere. Something in her, maybe her soul or her spirit or even her mind, had shut down. She hadn’t spoken for what seemed like years, hadn’t met anyone’s eye, had only screamed when the pain became too much to bear. Now even that had gone, swept away in the bliss of exhaustion.

 

Then she heard a cry.

 

She was accustomed to cries, even knowing where they originated from by now. There was the exhaustion cry, there was the beating cry, there was the terrified sob which some people hadn’t learned to control. But this was a different cry altogether, it was the cry of innocence and pain. The cry of a baby is what she would have said if she had ever heard the like before, but it was a cry which needed her.

 

Her head snapped up and she saw one of the sisters, Sister Mary from the way she carried herself, that slightly stooped walk which showed that she didn’t think that any of this was right, carrying a bundle out of the room.

 

She made a strangled gasp and one of the Sisters came over to where her head was, glaring into her eyes with an expression of absolute boredom. She didn’t care. She didn’t care that Tilda was hurting or exhausted or tormented by memories that not even thoughts of Magda could get rid of, she just thought that this girl was wasting her time. She had to be dealt with then removed. It was that clear to her.

 

All these thoughts rushed through Tilda’s head just before she brought her arm back, muscles screaming in protest as old bruises were reignited and old scabs opened, and pushed her fist straight towards the sister’s sullen mouth.

 

Her eyes didn’t even widen in surprise; she just grabbed the fist as it came towards her and pulled it down as Tilda let out another gasp of pain. She heard running footsteps as the bright white light was blocked out by grey fabric and felt the prick of a needle in her thigh - a dim pain compared to that coursing through her body along with the rage.

 

One of the sisters raised her eyebrows as she looked down at her, her severe cheekbones contrasting with her pale skin from a lifetime of never seeing the sun. Sunlight wasn’t encouraged here, only the surgical white light which brings to mind images of sharp metal implements and white rooms.

 

Dullness seemed to be running through her veins now, apathy fighting with the anger and pain in them and winning. Lead flowed through her body, in her mind she visualised it glowing red.

 

Someone lifted her up and set her on her feet, which shook with the new found weight. Her legs were wasted away from not moving and every step would have been agony had it not been for the apathy, still there, dulling her mind and slowing her reflexes down until when she was led into the corridors, feeling familiar stones and floorboards under her soles, she didn’t flinch. They led her through the Hall, and Tilda caught sight of Magda’s face in the swarm of people.

 

She screamed.

 

Magda ran forward, grabbing the nearest Sister and wiping out another with a well-placed kick until someone, a man a foot taller and wider than Magda, grabbed her round the waist and flung her to the floor, stamping on her ribs for good measure. Then time stopped; Tilda was left standing next to the prone, broken form of Magda who was grimacing with the pain but didn’t let the tears escape for fear of seeming weak in front of her.

 

 _Oh, the irony_ , the tiny part of Tilda who was still alive said.

 

Then time returned. The noise crashed down on top of her as Magda was dragged away, to a beating or to confinement if she’s lucky, to a session with Father Jupe if she wasn’t. It was all irrelevant anyway - the punishment doesn’t matter, it’s the fact that she was punished for trying to help someone.

 

Tilda was hurried into another room, the model room for the whole school; grey, fastidiously clean and with the same bright, pervading light which filled the whole place, day and night.

 

The nurses rushed out, she didn’t know where, and she was left alone, staring up at the ceiling and remembering Magda’s face.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Magda sat on the edge of her hard, grey mattress and swung her legs idly, trying not to let the raw skin on the back of her calves touch the scratchy woollen blankets. There were beatings, and then there were _beatings_ , and this was one of the latter.

 

She didn’t cry, though. After the first time, where she had sobbed like a baby and it hadn’t done anything except prolong it, she had cultivated an expression of disinterest which she maintained every time the whip came down.

 

It was solitary confinement again for her, just because she had launched herself at the man who had brought Tilda in, shaking and crying and alone. Their eyes had met and Magda had just ran.

 

She curled herself up on the bed and stared at the ceiling, imagining Tilda’s face.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Tilda was let out a week later, after the pain had mostly gone away and she stopped seeing the faces of children in her nightmares.

 

As the door opened and she was led out Magda appeared from behind the door, smiling nervously at her until the nurses had left, disappearing into one of the many white corridors to go and torture someone else.

 

Magda held out a box, sliding the lid back. ‘I brought you these,’ she whispered.

 

Tilda nodded, scraping the head of it against the smooth walls of the corridor until, defying all the normal laws of friction, she got it lit. Magda had never quite worked out how she did it.

 

It was noon, so the house was empty. They walked through the corridors, Magda supporting a limping Tilda who was holding the flame out in front of her like a beacon and staring fixedly at it with an expression that Magda had only ever seen once before, and that was when Father Jupe visited…

 

It was no secret, Tilda’s baby. Some of the girls had heard the cry, a few more had seen Sister Mary carrying the bundle off to the rooms at the back of the Girls’ Working School where none of the other girls were ever permitted to go. Magda had gone in there once as a punishment for some punch or other, and had been given the job of cleaning what they said was red paint off the wall.

 

Finally, they reached the dormitory. There were only four beds there now, two of which Magda knew were unoccupied; for a time she had been the only girl who was too difficult to send out. Not like Tilda. Tilda did what she was told.

 

She moved over to the bed and sat Tilda down, who hadn’t noticed that the match had burned all the way down and was licking at her fingers.

 

‘Tilda?’ she asked softly.

 

There was no expression in Tilda’s eyes, just a blank watery hazel which seemed to regard the world with complete apathy, as if she had seen it all and never wanted to look again. She shook her shoulders and there was still no response. Gently, she removed the match from her trembling fingers and blew out the flame.

 

Tilda didn’t turn round.

 

Finally, Magda did the one thing she didn’t want to do, not after Tilda had been through all that. She kissed her softly on the cheek, and something came back to Tilda’s eyes. She turned to look at her and nodded.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Three days later, Magda Halter and Tilda Tewt climbed down to the basement under the pretence that they had to get some more bleach. Well, Magda told them they needed more bleach, Tilda didn’t say a word. Tilda just didn’t speak any more.

 

They pushed the ladder down, not caring about its weight or how the wood splintered off into their hands as they climbed down the rungs, concentrating only on what would happen once they got into the basement.

 

As they turned around they saw that a section of the cellar was lit by the sunlight streaming in through an open window.

 

Tilda nodded and picked up the bags that they had stashed there the night before, tossing one to Magda. They pulled off the threadbare clothes of the Grey House and pulled on the others, worn, untidy men’s clothes which Tilda had taken from one of the houses she was dispatched to after knocking out the man who took her to the bedroom.

 

Magda cupped her hands and she stood on them, testing the weight. She grabbed hold of the window sill, pulling herself up and reaching down for Magda, who slowly crept out of the window on her stomach.

 

They didn’t stop, just went from climbing to running immediately, until the Grey House was a mere shadow behind them.


End file.
